After two humble pasta dishes from Rome (Carbonara and Amatriciana), this one is even more simple. The sauce is made from only three ingredients: freshly grated pecorino cheese, freshly ground black pepper and a bit of the pasta cooking water. … Continue reading Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe
The pasta sauce “Amatriciana” comes from the town of Amatrice, on the border of Lazio and Abruzzo. In Amatrice they serve it over spaghetti, and that’s what I have done. This dish has been taken over by the Romans, and … Continue reading Spaghetti all’Amatriciana
I’ve been planning for a while to write about cookbooks, to share with you my thoughts on which books are helpful and which are not. Unfortunately, most fall in the latter category. I decided to start with one of the most helpful books, even though it’s not even an actual cookbook with recipes. I’ve always been someone who likes to, or even has a strong urge to, understand things. It bugs me if I don’t understand something. And so I love Harold McGee’s book “Keys to Good Cooking, a guide to making the best of foods and recipes” (2010, ISBN 978 … Continue reading Understanding how cooking actually works with Harold McGee
Since the first time I ever had beef short ribs was Teriyaki style at Roy’s in Honolulu, I decided I should try to make my own short ribs teriyaki. First I found out that my regular butcher has something very close to short ribs after all, which he calls “naborst” (for all you Dutchies out here who can’t find short ribs either). The ribs themselves have been removed, but that’s not a big deal. I decided that marinating in teriyaki would not be required as the beef would be cooked in the marinade for 48 hours anyway. The result was … Continue reading Beef short ribs Teriyaki sous-vide
I don’t cook much with truffle, as the quality of the truffles available in the Netherlands is usually disappointing — especially considering the price. But when I got this dried truffle as a freebie to try out, I thought I’d make a nice risotto with it. For future reference I can point out that it is better to buy fresh truffle, because for the list price of this (1.5 grams of dried truffle and a bit of truffle-infused olive oil) at 8 euros ($10 US) you can usually buy 8 grams of fresh truffle (at least in Amsterdam), which will … Continue reading Truffle, leek and shallot risotto (Risotto al Tartufo, porro e scalogno)
The success of dishes such as soup and risotto depends to a great extent on the stock used. It will be so much better if you make your own stock from scratch rather than using a bouillon cube. I was about to post a recipe that requires vegetable stock, and realized that I had not posted about how to make vegetable stock yet. So this one comes first, and the truffle, leek and shallot risotto will follow tomorrow. The nice thing is that you can make this for free if you save up vegetable scraps in the crisper of your … Continue reading How to make home-made Vegetable Stock
I don’t like to throw away food and when I’m cooking I definitely don’t want to throw away any flavor. So when I brown meat, I always deglaze the pan to make a sauce out of the browned bits that have gotten stuck to the bottom of the pan. I’ve been cooking sous-vide for over a year now, but until recently I had not figured out how to use the juices that are left in the bag after cooking something sous-vide. Especially when braising meat for two to three days, there can be a lot of juice and since it … Continue reading How to use juices from the bag after sous-vide braising
I invented this dish myself, so as far as I know it is not an authentic recipe unless I recreated it by accident. It’s definitely Mediterranean though. I love the combination of lamb, eggplant and rosemary and that’s why I created this dish. I’ve been making it for years and have made small improvements over time. It is not a lot of work but it does take a while to make, so when I want to eat this after work I will prepare the night before. Ingredients For 2 servings as a main course or 4 servings as a substantial appetizer … Continue reading Lamb-stuffed Eggplant
On 30 November 2011, I started this blog with my first post. 161 days later, this is my 100th post. So not quite a post each day, but more than 4 per week is not bad. In my first post … Continue reading My 100th post: celebrate with Lasagne alla Bolognese
One of the most well-known Italian dishes outside of Italy is Spaghetti alla Bolognese. The funny thing about this is that Bolognese Meat Sauce (Ragù Bolognese) originates from the city of Bologna, where it is never eaten over spaghetti but always over fresh tagliatelle! So Spaghetti alla Bolognese is not really an Italian dish, even though today you can eat it in restaurants in Italy, especially the tourist traps. Another common misconception is that Ragù alla Bolognese is a quick sauce of tomato sauce and ground beef. First of all it is not quick but should simmer for hours, and … Continue reading Slow food: Ragù alla Bolognese
Welcome to Stefan’s Gourmet Blog! You can find an overview of my sous-vide recipes as well as times and temperatures by clicking on “Sous-Vide” above. If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive an email whenever I post a new recipe. I’ve only known about sous-vide cooking for less than two years and have owned a sous-vide water bath for about 15 months now, but the early adapters of sous-vide cooking in the home kitchen were already discussing recipes and techniques on eGullet in 2004. I am reading through all of the … Continue reading Best temperature for Beef Short Ribs sous-vide
Our front garden was suddenly infested with nettles and other weeds. We tried to get rid of our weed problem in the front garden by covering it with ivy, but due to the very cold winter the ivy was a slow starter this year and the weeds were faster. But we got our revenge on the nettles… by eating them! (Those of you who can read Italian had already figured that out, since tortelli di ortiche means nettle tortelli). I had tried tortelli di ortiche in Italy once or twice and liked it, so when we removed the weeds from … Continue reading Revenge on the Nettles (Tortelli di Ortiche)
A well-known and excellent antipasto (that I haven’t posted about yet, but I will at some point) is involtini of roasted eggplant, mozzarella and basil. Years ago I thought it would be nice to combine this with veal scaloppine and a bit of tomato sauce. I really loved the result and made it often when I had guests over for dinner. I hadn’t made it for a few years until yesterday, and liked it as much as before. It’s not difficult to make but the taste is very impressive. Ingredients For 4 servings 4 veal scaloppine (around 120 grams/4 oz each), … Continue reading Veal scaloppine with Eggplant and Mozzarella (Scaloppine alla Melanzana e Mozzarella)
Making your own icecream is so much better than store-bought. All the usual reasons for cooking from scratch apply: more flavor and only natural ingredients. If you’ve never made your own icecream before, banana is a good flavor to start with as the banana really helps to achieve a great texture even without adding eggs. All you need is bananas, whipping cream, sugar and a splash of freshly squeezed lemon juice! Please make sure to use ripe bananas for this, as it makes a huge difference. Ripe bananas are yellow with small brown spots (like freckles). The result will have … Continue reading Banana gelato
Summer still seems far away here in the Netherlands, so I felt like making this hearty pasta dish. It’s a simple dish with an original flavor, and very filling. This is not an original Italian dish; the combination of cauliflower and almonds is my own invention. Ingredients For 2 servings 150-200 grams (1/3-1/2 pound) penne pasta 300 grams (2/3 pounds) cauliflower florets 50 grams (2 oz) blanched almonds 1 garlic clove, minced 1/2 cup home-made chicken stock (or vegetable stock) 1 cup whipping cream salt and freshly ground white pepper 6 fresh basil leaves, finely shredded 1/4 cup freshly grated … Continue reading Penne with Cauliflower and Almonds (Penne Cavolfiori e Mandorle)
A famous dish from the Piemonte region in Italy is Brasato al Barolo, beef braised in Barolo, king of the red wines. Since a bottle of good Barolo does not come cheap, it is good to realize that you can achieve … Continue reading Beef braised in red wine (Brasato al Barolo)
This is one of those dishes where the quality of the main ingredient makes all the difference. If you use really good prosciutto (Spanish jamon iberico will also do) that has been aged for at least two years and is sweet rather than salty, this dish will be amazing. If you use cheap prosciutto, it will end up being so salty it’s hardly edible. Good prosciutto is expensive, but even good prosciutto comes in a natural shape and thus there are pieces of the ham that are less attractive to be sliced. For this recipe you will chop it anyway, … Continue reading Tagliatelle al Prosciutto
Most people have nostalgic memories of a favorite food made by their mother or grandmother. Just the smell of it will instantly propel you back to your childhood. In many cases the memory has been romanticized by our brains and it may therefore seem impossible to recreate it. For me, this was the braised chicken my grandmother made. Her husband, my grandfather, was the only one who had left the family farm, where his brothers and sister kept livestock including chickens long past retirement age. This included chickens, the original ‘organic’ kind, running around freely in the yard scavenging for … Continue reading Quest for my Grandmother’s Chicken, Part 1
This pasta dish was inspired by a dish on the menu of my favorite trattoria in Amsterdam: Lo Stivale d’Oro. They have “tagliatelle alla pugliese” on the menu, which is tagliatelle with peppers, salami and tomato sauce. (I have never seen this dish in Puglia, so my guess is that it is called pugliese because they use hot salami from Puglia.) I like it better with penne and prefer to use a type of salami that is not as hot. The taste of the dish is determined to a great extent by the salami used. I prefer to use a … Continue reading Penne with peppers and salami (Penne peperoni e salame)
Risotto or pasta is not served as a side dish in Italy, but sometimes you do get fish fillets served on top of a nice plate of risotto (in many cases raw, or just slightly cooked because the raw fillets are on top of the hot risotto). I really like the combination of a risotto made with fennel and home-made fish stock and a sea bream or seabass fillet, fried on the skin side only for juicy tender fish with crispy skin. Risotto takes some time and patience to make, but the texture is better if you do the proper … Continue reading Fennel risotto with Sea bream (Risotto di Finocchio con Orata)
This is one of my favorite dishes and always a big hit when I make it for guests. It tastes as great as it looks. It’s easy to tell where the name “rose of Parma” came from: it looks like … Continue reading Rosa di Parma (Stuffed fillet of beef)
Pizzoccheri are a short and flat type of pasta from the Valtellina region in Northern Italy, made from buckwheat and semolina flour. You can buy them dried or make them yourself (something I might try another time). They are traditionally eaten with swiss chard (coste) or savoy cabbage (verza) and the local cheese: valtellina casera. This cheese is important to get the authentic taste, but if you can’t find it then fontina can be used as a substitute. This is the only traditional pasta dish that I know that has cabbage in it. Unlike other pasta dishes that are supposed … Continue reading Pizzoccheri alla Valtellinese
My favorite Japanese cookbook is “Japanese cooking: a simple art” by Shizuo Tsuji. Since some ingredients are hard to come by outside of Japan and because I don’t have a very good reference (unlike Italian food, in many cases I don’t have a clue what it is supposed to taste like) I haven’t cooked as much out of this book as I would like to. One of my favorite recipes from the book that I have cooked many times before is the chicken loaf. Here I’ve served it with roasted eggplant, a ginger-soy dipping sauce and Japanese rice. This recipe … Continue reading Japanese Chicken loaf with Eggplant and Ginger
The ‘how to’ I wrote for making fresh pasta did mention spinach pasta, but didn’t really go into the details. I took some pictures when I recently made spinach tagliatelle with white ragù so now I can show step by step how to make fresh home-made spinach pasta from scratch. Spinach pasta can be used for all kinds of pasta such as tagliatelle, lasagne or ravioli. Ingredients per person: 1 egg, 100 grams (3/4 cup) of semolina flour, 50 grams (2 oz) of fresh spinach. You can go as high as 100 grams (4 oz) of fresh spinach, but then … Continue reading How to make fresh spinach pasta
“Rabbit sous vide” or variations of that are by far the most popular search term for people finding my blog through Google. Since I had only posted about rabbit sous-vide once and that was with a tomato sauce, I thought it would be nice to post about rabbit sous-vide without sauce as well. This is even easier to make, and still has all the advantages of sous-vide cooking: tender and moist rabbit instead of tough and dry. The preparation is extremely simple. Season each rabbit leg with salt and freshly ground black pepper and insert it into a pouch. Rub … Continue reading Rabbit leg sous-vide with rosemary
Two years ago we visited the city of Mantova in northern Italy and loved the Bigoli alle Vongole we had at Trattoria Cento Rampini. I was used to making pasta alle vongole with dried linguine or spaghetti, but really liked it made with bigoli. Bigoli are thick hollow spaghetti, made by extrusion. I am not sure if Cento Rampini used fresh or dried bigoli and whether theirs included eggs or not. During the same trip to Italy I picked up my own pasta extruder, so I’ve made bigoli alle vongole and other dishes with extruded pasta since. I like to … Continue reading Home-made Bigoli alle Vongole
Welcome to Stefan’s Gourmet Blog! You can find an overview of my sous-vide recipes as well as times and temperatures by clicking on “Sous-Vide” above. If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to … Continue reading Lobster sous-vide temperature experiment
Peperonata is a classic Italian side dish with peppers as the main ingredient. It is good with light meats such as chicken, rabbit or even frog legs. It is simple to make, healthy and very tasty. Instead of eating it as a side, you could also serve peperonata as pasta sauce over penne rigate, or even as a topping for crostini. Ingredients 1 red pepper (capsicum) 1 yellow pepper (capsicum) 1 green pepper (capsicum) 200 ml (1 cup) passata (sieved tomatoes) 150 grams (1/3 pound) red onions 1 garlic glove salt and fresly ground black pepper olive oil Preparation Slice … Continue reading Peperonata
The traditional way of making risotto is a bit of a chore. Sauté a minced onion, toast the rice, add wine, and then keep adding stock and stirring for around 18 minutes. Finish with some butter and in many cases (but not always) grated parmigiano. Adding the stock in parts instead of all at once is needed to get the correct texture: the grains of rice will stay whole instead of breaking and will release more thickening starch. I don’t mind the effort, but for a weekday meal after work or for a dinner party it is not very convenient. … Continue reading Risotto sous-vide with Asparagus and Goat cheese
Spaghetti alla Carbonara is a delicious and simple dish from Rome made with pancetta or guanciale and eggs. There should absolutely be no cream in carbonara: this is in fact a very good way to check the authenticity of Italian … Continue reading Spaghetti alla Carbonara
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